23/11/2014
Located in Kanungu District in South Western Uganda, Bwindi Impenetrable a.k.a "Home of gorillas" is along the Democratic Republic of Congo/Uganda border at the Albertine rift. It is a massive 331sq kilometers of jungle forest with thick, heavy and deep forest vegetation across steep climbs and valleys, mountains really. It's home to many animal species among which are over 300 bird species, 200+ butterfly species, 20+ species of frogs, monkeys and many others. The main attraction, as the name goes, are mountain gorillas. If you are a botanist however, you will find over 1000 flowering plant specie as well.
Of the estimated 650-700 world population of mountain gorillas, at least 320 individuals call Bwindi home! The forest is a UNESCO world heritage site. It goes without saying that gorilla tracking is the areas main tourist activity treating over 1000 tourists per year. Attached to this amazing adventure is a day in the life of the Batwa, a people known as the "original people of the forest," a culture evolved yet still very rich in their ancestral traditions. If you seek an adrenaline packed encounter with the worlds endangered mountain gorilla species, Bwindi is your go to guy.
A snap shot adventure.
As a "civilization", gorillas live in groups, these are spread over different parts of the forest, luckily for you, there are several park ranger stations as well, strategically placed in the different areas according to the gorilla group. As a tourist, you will want to look for accommodation close to a group of gorillas you have booked to see, we can help you with this. You will travel in groups of 8, if you are this many, works fine, if not, brace yourself to make some new friends, the grouping is both for your security and that of the gorillas, too many people at once may threaten them and provoke an attack whilst too few may seem like an easy target for them to tease. You will need a gorilla permit for this adventure, we help you secure these from Uganda Wildlife Authority at $600 per person.
After we have booked for you your gorilla group of choice and secured your accommodation, have a good nights rest and mentally prepare for a "physical" tour, the rangers send out trackers early in the morning who locate the position of the various groups and give feedback to the station/meeting point, you are then briefed by a ranger and drive off to the closest entry point to your gorillas along the forest, if you chose your accommodation close to the group you booked to track, it could take as little as 15 minutes to get to an entry point but if you slept far from the spot, it could be an hour or two before you get to point x.
Your tracking begins at that point, you will have a fully guided tour and most frequently an armed guard to es**rt on your adventure so your security is as tight as a bank vault.
The place gets pretty hot for a forest, but do dress the part, long trousers are advised. A potter won't cost you much (one of the locals) but will help a great deal, unless you are quite accustomed to trekking up hill and sloping quite a bit with considerable luggage, ill leave that to you. Do however carry an "easy to carry" backpack with multiple pockets, for both our sake, avoid camping size bags, we cannot camp inside the forest so lets leave that bag behind shall we! Also, expect a very close view of the gorillas, your close range cyber shot will work just fine, if you must take on the role of photographer, a canon D700 will do you good, a long range shot camera however may put you at a disadvantage because of how close to the apes we actually get plus you don't want to carry something bulky and yet delicate. On your two to four hour journey, you will see red tail monkeys , Chimpanzees and numerous bird species before you meet the Mountain Gorilla; who knows?, you may even shake hands with a silverback! Yes, they too are free to mingle in this forest and the best part is that they pay little mind to what your doing on their grounds! Tired yet? No worries, we shall stop by for water, no, you cannot drink it but you will take in the refreshing sight of a waterfall within the forest, take a dip if you are brave enough, we dare you.
When you have had your fill of the tracking and "ape-ing", tag along and we shall dive into the Batwa ancestry and later treat you to their exquisite traditional dish! See you there..